(Growing up, my father always hated when we ate suckers and other types of food which made us have sticky hands and faces. I never understood the problem with it until I got older. My wife and I decide to allow our young sun to have his very first sucker candy. He really starts to go crazy on it, both because of the sugar and because of it helping with his teething. I’m sitting on the couch and I noticed the sticky, sugar spit all over his face… and his hands.)

Me: “Oh, God… He’s so sticky!”

Wife: “Yep! He’s going to get you, Daddy!”

Me: “Noooo… No no no no no! Keep him away from me! That’s gross!”

(My wife just starts laughing and goes to get the baby wipes to start cleaning him off when my son RUNS over to me, forces the slobbery and sticky sucker into my hand, uses my arm to climb up me with this sticky hands, and grabs the sucker back from my hand as I’m sitting there in stunned silence. He proceeds to worm his way behind me, put the sucker in his mouth… and run his hands from my neck into my hair, then pull the sucker out and drum on my bare back with it.)

Me: “EWW! OH, GOD! It’s all over my back!”

(My wife is howling with laughter, trying to get a picture just as my father arrives and sees what is going on, with my son still running the sucker up and down my back, while slapping me with his other sticky hand.)

Father: “YES! JUSTICE! Good job, [Son]!”

(We both got a baby wipe bath after that, and I decided he had enough of the sucker for the day.)

(I’ve been helping a little boy, who’s about three or four, to look at glasses before he goes in for his eye test. He’s more excited by the glasses case, which is quite a cool one that you can open all the way out until the two pieces roll back on themselves 180 degrees and close. We put the case to one side until after his test, but when he comes out, the optician says he doesn’t need glasses.)

Me: “Great news! You’ve got really good eyes; you can see perfectly, so you don’t even need glasses.”

Boy: “Okay!”

(He seems quite happy with the praise, and finishing up goes smoothly, until he spots the case on the side.)

Boy: “Oh!” *points* “My toy!”

Mum: “You don’t need it; you’re not getting glasses.”

Boy: *starts to cry* “Want it.”

Mum: “You can’t have it unless you have glasses; it’s a glasses case and you don’t have glasses to go in it. You can have it next time if the optician gives you glasses then.”

(He slumps down in his pushchair and starts to cry, but his mum says to just ignore him while he calms down and we finish up the paperwork. I don’t think anything else of it until about an hour later when the same mum marches her son back into the opticians.)

Mum: “Right, tell the lady what you did. Show her! [Boy], right now.

(From under his jacket he pulls out the same glasses case, and looks up at me sadly. He must have grabbed the same type of case from the display when we weren’t looking.)

Me: “Oh, but Mummy told you that you couldn’t have it. You don’t need glasses. You shouldn’t take things when people say no; it’s naughty.”

Mum: “No, open it up and show the lady.”

(He opens the case; inside are a pair of sample frames from the display.)

Boy: “You said I needed glasses, so I got glasses…”

(It took everything I had to keep a straight face and explain to him what we had meant. His mum was so angry — mostly out of embarrassment — but it seemed a classic case of kid logic to me!)

(I am working in the jewelry section. A mother and her four-year-old daughter come looking for earrings for the daughter. I show them where the children’s earrings are.)

Mom: “So, which earrings do you like?”

Daughter: “I like those.” *points to a silver pair of puppy earrings*

Mom: “I’m sorry, hunny, but you can’t have those. You’re allergic to silver.”

Daughter: “But Mom, I’m not allergic to puppies!”

(The mom and I laughed. The daughter ended up buying a gold pair of star earrings.)

(My daughter was born with a large red birthmark on her face. As a result, rather than telling her she is pretty, a lot of people tell her she is clever, instead. When she is three, we are waiting in line at the grocery checkout. My daughter decides to sing a little song she’s made up about being a “clever girl.”)

Daughter: *singing* “I’m clever, clever, clever. I’m such a clever girl…”

(The man ahead of us in line, waiting with a boy of about seven years old, starts speaking in a mocking tone, which confuses me.)

Man: “Oooh, there’s a clever girl! Everyone, this one’s actually clever!”

(His son looks uncomfortable, which seems to inspire the dad to try harder.)

Man: “Come on, it’s a clever girl! Bet you’ve never met one of those before! So much cleverer than all the rest of us!”

(As I am trying to figure out if this guy is seriously trying to bully a preschooler, he turns around with a sneer.)

Man: “Oh, we should all be so impressed by the clever girl…”

(Then he sees my daughter, his face goes pale, and, grabbing his own kid, he leaves the line without another word to us. I guess because, apparently, he thinks it’s okay to mock most small children… but not the ones with visible birthmarks?)

Daughter: *happily oblivious* “I’m clever!”

Cashier: *smiling* “Yes, you are! Would you like a cookie?”

(My father is an identical twin. When both he and his brother were in the military and my uncle was visiting, I was about two. My mother and I had an interesting conversation.)

Mom: *pointing at my uncle* “Who’s that?”

Me: “That’s Daddy!”

Mom: *pointing at my father* “Who’s that?”

Me: “Two daddies!”

(I’m sure it seemed reasonable to me at the time.)